How the GOP Scams the Tea Party

A friend had this image on Facebook that I could not pass up.  It sums up perfectly how the GOP is using the hate and prejudices of the Tea Party and the Christianists crowd to benefit the wealthy while screwing over the party's wingnut supporters.  Sadly, they are too stupid and or bigoted to figure out that they are being used. 

ABC News Picks Up Ohio Assault on Ohio Gay Student

Thankfully, ABC News has run with the story of the 15 year old gay student who was savagely assaulted while his attacker yelled out anti-gay epithets. The attack is in my view the direct by-product of the incessant anti-gay mantra voiced virtually daily by Christianists, disingenuously named "family values" organizations and their political whores in the Republican Party. One can only hope that as members of the general public watch the video that captured this gratuitous violence they will connect the dots that lead back to the religious extremists and hate merchants of the far right such as Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Linda Harvey, Don Wildmon - and yes, Pope Benedict XVI. Each of these falsely Christian individuals and their respective organizations bear responsibility for this attack because they help foster an atmosphere and mind set where anti-gay bigotry is deemed acceptable. I sincerely hope that the beating victim's mother (pictured at right) will hang tough and settle for nothing less than maximum criminal prosecution against her son's attacker. A lawsuit against the school division would also be most welcome. Here are nightlights from ABC's coverage:

An Ohio high school student waited in a classroom to attack a 15-year-old gay classmate, beating him repeatedly in a vicious assault captured by a bystander on a cellphone.

"I covered myself and shielded my body, and he kept hitting," the gay student, who did not want to be identified, told ABC's affiliate WSYX in Ohio. "Nobody did anything."

Now the boy's mother, Rebecca Collins of Chillicothe, has said she would seek justice for the Oct. 17 beating. The Ross County Sheriff's office said it is investigating the attack but so far has not made any arrests. James Osborne, principal at Union-Scioto High School, located about 50 miles south of Columbus, confirmed the "unfortunate" attack, and said "charges have been filed."

"It turns my stomach," Collins told ABC's affiliate station. "It's my son. I don't care, and they did it just because he's a homosexual." Other students watched as the attacker waited for his victim to arrive in the classroom. He then shoved his prey to the ground, and repeatedly punched him in the face.

Osborne, the principal at the 550-student high school, said, "We have never had an incident of this nature. "I am not saying we have never had any reports of bullying -- we have just as much as any school. But we've never had anything of this magnitude." He would not release the name of either the attacker or the victim.

He said the school did not have a gay-straight alliance but had an anti-bullying policy in force. The student who initiated the attack was suspended for three days.

Collins' son said that he had been regularly bullied, including a recent comment that appeared on a posting of his picture on Facebook: "Check out the definition of a faggot."

Currently, an anti-bullying law is pending in Ohio's state legislature, proposing the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity among other enumerated protections to the state's existing anti-bullying law.

I truly hope that the Ohio legislature will close its ears to the hate and lies of the "godly Christian" set and enact the amendments to the state's anti-bullying laws. The blood on the hands of conservative Christians seems to grow by the day. When will the larger public open their eyes to the fact that the far right form of Christianity is toxic and a threat to society?

Skepticism of Palin Growing

Meanwhile, polling is showing that people are beginning to wake up to just what an irresponsible choice Sarah Palin was for the GOP vice presidential slot. Let's be candid: from the interviews I have watched, Sarah makes the typical soccer mom look like a NASA physicist. It's down right painful to watch her babble like a cretin on issues about which even average individuals could discuss more coherently. If the GOP thinks Palin is representative of women (other than Christianist women), then American women should be outraged by the insult. I truly hope that McCain/Palin go down to defeat and that perhaps the GOP will wake up to the fact that appeasing the nutcase Party base translates into alienating all other voters. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post:

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With the vice presidential candidates set to square off today in their only scheduled debate, public assessments of Sarah Palin's readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

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Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.

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Nearly a third of adults in a new poll from the Pew Research Center said they paid a lot of attention to Palin's interviews with CBS News's Katie Couric, a series that prompted grumbling among some conservative commentators about Palin's competency to be the GOP's vice presidential standard-bearer. The Pew poll showed views of Palin slipping over the past few days alone.

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About half of all voters said they were uncomfortable with the idea of McCain taking office at age 72, and 85 percent of those voters said Palin does not have the requisite experience to be president. The 60 percent who now see Palin as insufficiently experienced to step into the presidency is steeply higher than in a Post-ABC poll after her nomination early last month. Democrats and Republicans alike are now more apt to doubt her qualifications, but the biggest shift has come among independents.

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In early September, independents offered a divided verdict on Palin's experience; now they take the negative view by about 2 to 1. Nearly two-thirds of both independent men and women in the new poll said Palin has insufficient experience to run the White House. . . .

Palin now repels more independents than she attracts to McCain. The share of independent women less apt to support McCain because of the Palin pick has more than doubled to 34 percent, while the percentage more inclined to support him is down eight points.

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Despite Palin's slip in public assessments, the boost she has provided among some core segments of the GOP base has not faded. Enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy among Republicans, conservatives and white evangelical Protestants climbed sharply after the party's convention in St. Paul, Minn., where Palin made her debut, and it has held relatively steady since.